Otter Creek Road was closed for more than an hour Tuesday afternoon after a hydrogen sulfide leak at the BP Husky refinery. All roads in the area have since reopened, but a portion of the refinery had to be evacuated because of the leak.

A spokesperson for BP says monitoring crews and Toledo Environmental Services have checked residential areas east and west of the refinery, but equipment showed no hydrogen sulfide readings in those areas. Monitoring will continue until the refinery, city of Oregon and Toledo Environmental Services are confident there are no problems.

According to BP-Husky, there are currently no health or safety concerns outside of the plant. The refinery also says no injuries have been reported.

The company released the following statement about the leak:

Earlier today, the Sulfur Recovery Units (SRU) at BP shut down which resulted in a release of Hydrogen Sulfide (H2S) to the atmosphere. The BP-Husky Refining Emergency Response Team began monitoring the situation and as a precautionary measure, evacuated employees from the North section of the refinery. All traffic into the refinery was shut down.

BP-Husky contacted Toledo Environmental Services and the National Response Center per protocol procedures. Our incident response team immediately began offsite monitoring and initial reports indicate that there have been no offsite environmental, health or safety impacts at this point.

Oregon Police has been contacted and as a precautionary measure, Otter Creek Road is being shut down and all nonessential personnel have been released from the refinery.

Our priorities are the safety of our employees and community and therefore we have taken these conservative steps.

Operations at the refinery have improved and the cause of the release is under investigation.